Tragedy of return to hostile offices
benjiweber.co.uk
benjiweber.co.uk
I once had a former employer force me to take an espresso machine home that I had brought to work because it created a situation where a different shift was coming to our teams area to use it when we weren’t there and they were concerned by the liability. Very non-specific concerns, I might add. So rather than ensure teams had access to real coffee they banned employees having their own coffee equipment so we can all commiserate together over the bottom dollar filth in the break room.
This is the type of basic shit most companies can’t get right, much less the far more complicated challenges involved in creating positive team dynamics.
I have no faith that any sufficiently large company can make an inviting office environment, and this is a major reason why I am a staunch remote work advocate.
What's disheartening is that a lot of "return to office" plans I've heard of from friends involve conditions even worse than what was there before. For example, hot-desking replacing the previous (also terrible) open office.
I'm too young to have lived through the golden age of engineers actually having an office to work in. But my best experience (besides WFH) was at my first job out of school, in a cube farm - at least you had a little bit of privacy and space to put your stuff. Every office trend since then has been for the worse.
I doesn't actually replace it. It's an additional horror on top of all the old ones.
Here, however, I can make more working remotely than I can in office for one of the few local companies. I mean it's an obvious choice.
That’s one of the issues I have with open floor plan offices: people buzzing around in my peripheral vision can be incredibly distracting and detrimental to productivity depending on the day and my mental state, and there’s almost nothing that can be done to mitigate that.
In an open office this is largely a no-win situation as well: if you get a position with your back to the wall, you see people milling about everywhere, and if you face a wall, the whole office sees your screen.
Don't worry, the office-lords have solved that! You can book a focus room for no more than 60 minutes when you need to focus. PROBLEM SOLVED!!!! /s
People who complained about cubicles were probably mourning the loss of an enclosed office (which I imagine is far superior). As we are learning, it can always get worse, and what was once bad is now good by comparison to what we're getting now.
There's various sound absorbing partitions one can buy online that seem kind of neat. But many seem to start at $1000, which suuucckkkss. I wonder what the bulk rate is for material like recycled pet. Not that I have any idea how to turn it into a soft-ish adjustable sound absorbing wall...
Wife's previous office was better. Offices were around the interior, so cubes go light from the windows. Those offices had windows, so they too could get some natural light during the day.
Current office is open plan, which is kinda dumb. Seating chart has me and another middle manager next to each other. Of the people who come in regularly (no forced RTO), we're the most frequently there AND the most frequently on calls. Le Sigh.
Thankfully, the executives were rarely there and their doors were left open, so sunlight still got through.
Nothing is as bleak as security offices and SCIFs. Even the Soviets painted bunker interiors. Americans are too cheap.
Especially if we constantly have little break-off meetings or get togethers in the otherwise unoccupied office for sensitive things that we don't want overheard by the gossip mill. Maybe just give the office to someone who is 1) always here and 2) needs the space?
The CEO and CFO still have real offices. But the other C-suite are open plan (sort of, different walls and a couple of C-only conference rooms).
As far as open office goes, it’s probably as good as it gets. I don’t love it but I don’t hate it. I could stay home, but go in 3x week.
In about 20 years of cubicle work, that was never my experience. It might be better than open plan for that (never had to suffer through that outside of exceedingly small offices, up to ~5 total people in a bullpen), but sound from calls in a cubicle environment (especially one shared with non-technical-IC staff) can be pretty bad.
It was not received well. But it is not about logic.
Cynically, it makes layoffs a lot more opaque. When everyone gets to express their individuality by sitting in an identical, constantly-shifting workspace; you can't "walk by" someone's desk and notice it's cleaned out and their gone.
I don't think that's the main reason (the main reason is trying to cheap out on office rent and ape corporate fads), but it's probably a happy added perk for those who are pushing these things.
I was in focus heaven and I didn’t even know it. Miss that job.
Now I think those people are getting the same back to office spiel.
The team was large. Like 50+ devs easily. All scatter in different rooms.
Bliss
Then came the stupid trend of organic seating. Cubicle’s ? Thing of the past they said, yet our productivity suffered. Great for sprints but quickly diminished due to constant distractions forcing engineers to invest in noise canceling headphones.
The WFH movement is because water flows downhill. We learned that we made the office an incredibly inefficient place to work, because we didn’t follow the science and threw away decades of research because of a new ‘fad’ that the CEO’s liked. Too bad CEO’s, I have been WFH ever since corporate America thought organic seating was cool.
I will never go back, in fact us programmers should unite and unionize to solidify this benefit before they try and take this away for good and make our jobs more difficult.
And they utterly failed.
But I'm willing to put up with cubes for the right job. There is no job that would be worth putting up with an open office layout or, worse, hot-desking.
I would think that if companies want people back in the office so badly, they would be willing to do something to make working in the office pleasant and productive. But I guess that's not how they think.
Some office spaces being bad doesn't imply we should get rid of office spaces overall.
If the company you're working for is so crazy on its office requirements, it could be as crazy with its remote work requirements.
Seems like this is a company specific issue, not an office vs remote issue.
Seems like you've been at a fair share of bad companies, but that's doesn't generalize to a broader picture of all office spaces.
I would oppose you _my_ office experience (which ofc doesn't generalize either), which is overwhelmingly positive. Yet I won't argue that because my experience is good, everyone should feel the same.
Says who?
There's no more reason for an office space to be bad rather than good. And there's no reason to think that having a good one is based on luck.
If office space dynamics and setup are important to you, then put it in your job search mental list and find a job that matches that.
> Says who?
Says anyone who has spent more than a decade in the workforce.
> There's no more reason for an office space to be bad rather than good. And there's no reason to think that having a good one is based on luck.
By “no reason”, you mean no logical reason. That might be true. Unfortunately a crafted reality controlled by sociopaths isn’t required to be logically consistent at every layer. Hence our current reality, where this is very much a case of luck.
> If office space dynamics and setup are important to you, then put it in your job search mental list and find a job that matches that.
Thanks for the advice. That’s /exactly/ what all the folks working remotely have done. That’s also why we are agitated by shitty management trying to take it away.
Well, no. I have worked almost double that, and I don't feel that way.
I tend to think there is mainly an echo chamber of somewhat entitled young north americans incorrectly correlating high compensation in a decade long hyped industry (tech) with social status.
> a crafted reality controlled by sociopaths
Well if that is your definition of reality, maybe you should consider whether you could be part of your issue with office spaces...
> shitty management trying to take it away
Definitely, that kind of remark reinforces my opinion that you should reflect on whether your look at the situation is biased.
> you should reflect on whether your look at the situation is biased
LOL this is a troll right?
... right?
That said, the 'entitled young Americans' thing appears to be a common talking point I see on linkedin and other corporate safe spaces.
WFH was like setting rats in a maze to free range and noticing they can be more productive but at the expense of common purpose. This brings a new dimension to the notion of “productive” that the sociopath layer is uncomfortable with. I think because it implies workforce instability.
Even Google, a company that purported to be about worker freedom to harvest productivity if top workers, has retreated to this position.
It’s a bit shocking to me still nearly 4 years later.
If you take the approach of "watch what they do, not what they say", Google is one of the clearest examples of pro-RTO: they invest in so many perks because they want to make the panopticon feel comfy.
There are other companies that don't give you a darn thing and just dangle the loss of one's job as a threat (Amazon), but I think top performers are more swayed by the "free food" approach than the "let's have a big public dashboard with the entire team's attendance" approach (again, Amazon).
Sorry this is patently elitist but I think it’s true.
- Open-plan offices, hot-desking, and other negative patterns are more cost-effective for a given amount of space.
- Cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all spaces are "easier" to manage from a personnel/HR point of view. Less griping about who gets the "good office," as there is no good office. No need to think about differences between people, we can just treat them as fungible "human resources."
- Similar race to the bottom regarding amenities (coffee, break rooms, etc.). Just look in the other comments of this thread. It's easier to target the least common denominator than provide personalized/individualized benefits in a manner that's fair to everyone.
- Insecure, distrusting managers promote bad office spaces like open plans, hot desking, etc. in order to better micro-manage their teams. Good managers can push back, but in practice the bad managers tend to be the squeaky wheels and get the grease.
I've worked for 10 different companies so far in my career. All but one I would consider a good company. But of those nine "good" companies, I have had one good office space. That's why I've been remote for the last 6 years. For me personally it was either go remote or leave the industry. I'm never making a open-plan or even cube-farm layout my primary working space again.
But it's the overwhelming majority of companies.
As an example, Pinball and arcade games are often very easy to source. Where I've seen them at my workplace, they were brought in and maintained by employees. Some space needs to be allocated, and maybe needs a bit of electrical work if a high density arcade forms, but otherwise... May be different if there's no collectors in the employee base, or in countries where machines are scarce.
This is what you said. Spot the differences.
Trick question, there aren’t any.
The espresso makes most people more productive. Absolutely.
If not the espresso, some other thing one might enjoy degusting daily.
For the espresso case. Your office is likely too far for one sitting at his desk to suddenly head over 20 mins a few blocks away to appreciate a delicious sip for 5 minutes. What if on Thursday what I really need is a delicous espresso but in total peace with nobody interrupting that moment between me and my cup?
Maybe I'm going too far with what espresso might mean to people but Your office shaping the way I want to live my life without a doubt is going way too far.
It makes me far less productive to have to adapt my life to the office schedule, location, and the many uncontrollable distractions taking place throughout the day.
It's on me to make my work environment most productive and if I'm unable to do that then just fire me.
You will likely object, so let me introduce to you, Bud, the pug. See Bud needs to go out for a walk even more than I do. I love my dog so I take him out 4 times each day.
It makes me less productive to have to run at 5pm everyday to take the dog out the least late I possibly can. I have to stop whatever I'm doing and get back into the zone.
It also makes me less productive to go home at 5 o'clock. See, I don't have much respect for people requiring butts on seats to appease their own insecurities. You can be damn sure that I won't give them a minute of my time unless I have to.
Also, I'm best to do work from morning to midnight in bursts. I gladly do extra hours that way, because: productivity.
I could go on and on, air is to dry as office buildings would not consider people's health unless illegal if they can save a few hundred bucks on the monthly energy bill. Lights are too blue/white/cold they hurt my eyes after a couple of hours.
All that being said, it depends on the job, for most jobs my arguments would stand the productivity tests with everyone once they've adapted to remote settings. Wouldn't apply to members of a music band, circus jugglers working in duo, dolphin trainers, nor salsa dancers. People who do these jobs are more productive on site, and the reason they never complain like me and my kind do is simple: they don't actually work in an office.
where I used to work, the micro kitchens all had their own foodservice licenses, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d balked at employees bringing their own equipment
small companies don’t give a shit about stuff like that ime
Such is the consequence of complex organizations and outsourcing, as well as employees increasing demands to have a say in their schedule.
When you really think about it, collaboration is the problem rather than the solution. The modern distributed nature of work means that you need a huge amount of collaboration to even figure out what to do, when, and to resolve all dependencies.
So it's pretty maddening that managers call for more collaboration. We need less of it. The perfect workflow is where you tell me with clarity what to do, and then let me do it without distractions or changing everything halfway-through.
Modern employees spent half their time in email, chat and meetings. Not producing anything. And that's generous, quite a few have to find actual productive time in the fragmented 10% of their schedule. It's as if we've all become managers.
Spot on.
> The perfect workflow is where you tell me with clarity what to do, and then let me do it without distractions or changing everything halfway-through
In traditional manufacturing processes (i.e., physical goods), this is possible and often achieved. Productivity can be easily measured by dividing the physical output - like the number of items produced - by the factory headcount. Innovation exists in cycles that precede manufacturing, since changes to the factory layout are expensive and often require interrupting production.
Software development is a different beast. Innovation is intermingled in the 'manufacturing' process. Requirements change faster, and we need processes to accommodate that. Work happens in smaller time frames (e.g., two-week sprints). Productivity and delivered value are harder to measure. Paying customers are in the loop and provide constant feedback we need to filter and incorporate for our 'product' to succeed.
The software development challenge is more consultative in nature than the manufacturing one.
Why would I be entitled to interrupt someone to review my code, just because they are sitting next to me?
Always on zoom? No, thanks. It invariably devolves into micromanaging.
Constant KPI awareness? Most companies cannot even agree on how a valuable KPI looks like.
Remote pair programming? Honest question here, is pair programming still a thing?
Still, pair programming makes sense in the abstract: Coding is not manufacturing. Applying SQC to code is nonsensical. Under the circumstances, 100% inspection is all you've got. Pair programming probably makes sense in cases where minimizing bugs at every step, right down to the creation of every line of code, is needed because the cost of a bug explodes the longer it exists. Probably rare cases. But worth knowing to know that coders are not working on a production line.
It's not really your place to say what's infuriating to others when your pair programming experience with a _single_ (somewhat neurotic) programmer was irritating. In my experience, pair programming has been a delightful two-way share of ideas that was both refreshing and productive (but I'm not going to claim universality or such an experience).
Pair programming probably does suck when one side is extremely impatient and overbearing.
What you did wasn't "pair programming", it was an argument.
If, however, you see them as humans with different skills that can be shared amongst each other, then pair programming makes a lot more sense.
I’ve just encountered it at my newest job.
A little of it actually seems good, but more as a “show and tell” of how some part of the system you know operates, that may include writing a little code in service of better learning.
Otherwise it seems to be a great way to get two developers to have the output of half a developer.
Yes. Whether remote or in person, pairing works best when there's a experience/skill mismatch. Both parties benefit because the senior has to know and explain the why and the junior learns the what. I enjoy it as long as it's small doses.
It is draining and tiresome when done for long periods but I think worth it. It keeps you sharp and builds relationships with teammates.
Pairing with someone on your level can also be beneficial but with diminished returns.
I don't know about strict pair programming where one person instructs and the other person types, and then they switch after a while.
But.. if you mean two or more devs on a call looking at code.. then that is very much a thing.
Yes, and because your work depends on them.
It's still by far the most effective tool for certain tasks. Inherit an extremely complex codebase with 50 levels of abstraction? You could spend a week tinkering with it, or you could step through the code with the guy who wrote it for 30 minutes. But it's not something you'd want to do every day, or even frequently.
The RTO is being entirely driven from the top by institutional investors wanting to avoid losses on property investments and from the bottom by those who have yet to grapple with the fact they dont have friends or hobbies and need you in the office so that they dont feel like such embarrassing losers.
The return to office has nothing to do with productivity, trying to look at things through that lens reflects a total lack of understanding of whats going on.
I don't buy it.
These people somehow managed to internally identify the company with the office, and reducing the (open plan) office space with downsizing the company. And they were dead serious. No arguments (we did this during the pandemic and our revenue soared, acting against the wishes of all employees means shooting oneself in the foot) would be accepted. So the best engineers left, end of story.
I know i'm supposed to "contribute to the conversation" but it's important to recognize that the above point is exactly right.
Could it be that the board members of these companies are in that nebulous investor class?
Many companies would benefit financially by reducing their office footprint and thereby paying less rent. The idea that boards everywhere would sabotage their own companies to appease commercial real estate investors is tinfoil hat level stuff.
If you notice that companies make similar decisions as a result of changing market trends (a global pandemic, for instance) it’s probably because those decisions were deemed the most financially sound. They weren’t colluding to screw over employees.
So yeah, I am told to subsidize failing real estate without getting anything in return. Won't I think of the poor, poor investment managers and their real estate? Why would I? Do they think about me?
Like saying "you better support your employer's aims or maybe grandma wont get her cancer medicine," is not the gotcha you maybe think it is.
There’s no grand conspiracy where executives are helping boost the holdings of REITs and institutional investors. Executives as a “class” and a “job” just like the traditional butts in chairs approach to work. They have to think about the entire company and it’s easier to have a singular approach. Instead of bespoke approaches by team/department/title where some people are RTO and some WFH as that quickly reverts to everyone is on zoom/teams for every meeting because of the remote people.
WFH has also provided a whole host of new and unusual problems for HR. I’m sure most executives are just tired of hearing about it. In my own experience/approximation only about 1 in 3 people are can actually self manage in a way that’s needed for remote work to be effective. I think software development is a very specific job that is very well suited to WFH but most other jobs within a company are not.
I don't buy it.
Headlines don't support this, articles only get clicks when celebrating remote work. But there is a very clear disconnect where headlines are saying "remote work is more productive" and executive surverys are saying "we are moving back to offices".
Execs (on the whole, not anecdotes) don't hate money and productivity. If remote work was so much better, they would be rushing to it at breakneck speed. Instead the opposite is happening.
HN Note: Only a small fraction of workers are developers or work in IT. The white collar workforce is huge an varied. The remote vs. RTO debate is about workers on the whole, not just the small sliver that are devs.
RTO is dictated by those people because without the headcount in the office it's plain and obvious that most of their "work" is illusory and provides no value beyond giving them means to build their kingdoms. RTO is mostly about self important and self-preservation of this whole class.
I think you are trivializing a pretty huge risk on the global markets.
I’ve worked with/on dozen or so executive teams, public and private, bought sold RE and leased/renewed RE at most of them. Nobody cares about the landlords or the shareholders of those companies. It’s actually an adversarial relationship just like most tenant/landlord relationships. Each party is looking out for themself.
The math makes no difference when all you care about is yourself. The executives are wanting RTO because they feel like that’s what’s in their company’s best interest. I’m not buying into the grand conspiracy theory that’s floating around.
To me, it is all so simple. Does the micro manager to a fault know they are a micro manager? Of course they do but they can't help it. It is strategic and a trade off. It is the same exact thought process but just applied at the company level.
"Of the billions in tax incentives granted to US companies every year by cities and states, many agreements require workers to come into the office some of the time, or at least live in the region. For companies receiving these incentives, relaxing in-office attendance could be costly."
"New Jersey paused its on-site requirement when Covid hit. Last summer, though, the state announced that companies receiving those benefits must bring employees back to the office about three days a week — a lower bar than before, but still challenging for firms struggling to hang onto workers in a red-hot labor market."
"The state [of Texas] said it will revoke benefits granted under the multibillion-dollar Enterprise Zone Program to companies whose employees no longer work on site at least half the time."
The article does go into pushback the states are getting from companies for imposing these, to be fair, but it's clear they have some levers to pull in order to coerce companies to bring employees back to the office.
[1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-02-21/another-t...
https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/remote-workers-less-productiv...
But I won’t make that argument because it is the third rail of HN comments. So I make all my arguments assuming WFH improves productivity.
And yes I know some of those bottom feeders in our place too. They're the ones constantly distracting you at work with chitchat. I have several people I try to avoid but unfortunately our pisspoor desk booking system (Planon, never buy that!) doesn't even allow to look up where other people are.
This time though it's more because enough isn't being built to meet demand. A good chunk of property is be gobbled up by AirBNB.
I can see why office culture doesn't appeal to you, you sound like a grump who doesn't enjoy the comraderie you can form with people that you spend 40 hours a week with. If you can enjoy the cognitive dissonance of socializing with black squares in a zoom, that's great, but I'd rather enjoy the time I spend working, not merely tolerate it. I don't think that makes me a loser.
I'd much rather spend that time with people I chose. Some you of you borderline sound like you're suffering from Stockholm syndrome
It's a job, it's IT, it's easy, it's well paid, as long I don't have a literal archnemesis annoying me every day I literally don't care who I work with. Not everyone has the luxury to quit a job and find a new one right away, especially in the current climate
Doesn’t make you a loser, but it does make you very lacking in empathy for the real life consequences of the missed band recitals, lunches with a spouse and many many opportunities to build the life-long links of family via wfh for in exchange for a 2-3 year relationship with colleagues
Those colleagues won’t remember your name in another 2-3 years. But as this version of the argument goes, your short term social needs get prioritized?
You must be a great person to work with if this is whats going on with your internal monologue about the people you interact closely with.
Two anecdotes supporting this.
Back in my early career I worked with this dev in their 40s. He always brought his gaming laptop to office and would stay late in the office. He had family and kids, this was the only time he could play games without being bothered.
At another job, we had a director who was workaholic and would schedule meetings at insane hours like 7PM. You were not forced to take meetings in person, could dial in but still it was insane. Rumors were that she was going through divorce and work was escape from personal life. Escape from your life is fine but do it without making everyone else's personal life miserable.
I can see such people wanting RTO.
Projecting much?
There's also a segment of the population that somewhat overlaps with the previous paragraph that uses work as their primary social outlet.
It is also why I am shamelessly pro-WFH. The banality of this mindset as the possibly main major contributing cause from labor for RTO and all the many, many issues that office work causes is too much for me to handle.
Get some non-work friends and hobbies. Understand career mobility and productivity, if that’s what you really want to prioritize, is equally there via WFH. Leave the rest of us out of it.
I agree for many big tech firms, but I'll present the other (or my personal) side.
I'm a developer. And I am looking for a job in an office, actually about to take one very soon and get out of my remote-only gig.
A lot of engineering cultures don't function well without face-to-face, high bandwidth conversation and whiteboard time.
1. Our design process has suffered greatly, specifically the process of collaborating on high-level design and consecutively lowering the conversation into a low-level design. Instead it becomes: one person writes something up, and we all read a doc with bunch of text and diagrams, add comments, owner iterates. Collaboration is serialized. When we try to get into a room and brainstorm, the limits of voice/video chat take over and we can't effectively communicate 3-4 people at a time like you can in the same room. And unfortunately my company hasn't given everyone iPads to whiteboard together, so I think you cut out an appreciable chunk of the engineering population who are primarily visual thinkers (a la 'Visual Thinking' by Temple Grandin).
2. Junior folks flounder, unable to ramp up quickly drinking through such a thin pipe of information (a lot of which is tribal and needs to be received from the mouth of others). The talented folks were going to succeed anyway and have adapted, but the average kid is isolated and out of sight of management. The senior folks love that isolation and never want to return to office. The junior folks may think it's cool, but in 5 years many more will still be junior engineers.
3. Work is more than productivity. I don't need to drink the kool-aid and take the slide down to the ball-pit, but I need daily face-to-face contact else I start to feel alienated. I wish my social life was nested in a loving community of best friends but it's not. I live in NYC, my friends are a 40 min train ride or too busy to meet up on a nightly basis (as am I). I might feel different about this if I had a partner and kids, but then I'd say anti-RTO is driven from competing priorities for a worker's time. Which is fair, but not the argument here.
This is argument keeps getting parroted without evidence or skepticism. Where's the evidence? Just because many people don't like RTO doesn't mean that RTO is driven by evil forces up to no good. There's nuance - on both sides of the debate! - and it does no one a service to reduce the arguments to bumper stickers.
No, employees wanting to work from home don't universally want to loaf off. No, employees that want to work from an office aren't universally middle managers trying to justify their existence. Some people work better at home, others work better at the office. Some companies have found WFH to improve productivity overall and are flexible, and other companies have found RTO to improve productivity overall. If you work better from home, go work for the former. If you work better from the office, go work for the latter. Let the market decide. If WFH is overall more productive, eventually the RTO companies' performance will suffer, and vice versa. No need to blame things on the boogeyman behind the curtain!
We already have this. People that can’t stand sitting at a screen all day and need to be outdoors to feel good find jobs that suit that. People who need to interact and not do paperwork find jobs that suit this. And vice versa. RTO and WFH will just be the next phase of that.
I look forward to the market showing us, objectively, which is most effective on the whole when enough companies with radically different policies compete with each other.
I have a strong suspicion which will prevail but I want to see objective real world results.
If your commute time was paid for by the firm, all the firms calculations would shift dramatically.
A worker rise up moment, if we ever needed more.
The commonly stated goal is to “work together” - something you can do if you have years of experience being in online communities, and alien if you have not.
He had the habit of playing music really, really loud from his speakers. It got so bad that they tried to relegate him to different floors and build a separate office, just for him and the lucky few that worked with him (me included).
Another thing he did was being his dog to the office despite there being people allergic to dogs in the office.
And people are trying to force everyone nack to the office because of "collaboration".
But only senior people could have windows so they covered his windows in cardboard …
I once worked at a company where almost the opposite was true, or at least they prided themselves on not factoring that in and in moving desks several times a year. Managers and senior people tended to be near the center of a very crowded office space, away from the windows, I suppose to be closer to the "action". Newer or less important folks tended to be near the windows.
Yeah, well, conflict with the corporate overlords tends to be pretty one-sided, so we’ll need to attack that problem if you want that to change. There are proven approaches. But this isn’t “compromise”, it’s workers having their work environment dictated to them.
> sacrificing their team’s potential on the altar of individual autonomy.
Oh wow, uh, that was not the direction I expected the rest of that sentence to go.
> I’ve experienced some of my most joyful work in teams working together in the same space. I’ve benefited from flexibility and inclusion with remote work. I’ve also been able to contribute as part of larger open source communities where I couldn’t even know everyone by name.
On the topic of knowing everyone by name: so very much easier remote. Real people don’t have a name tag next to every statement they make, or hovering under their face at all times. Much harder in person.
I am still not convinced "in the same space" makes any difference. I couldn't care less if co-worker is sitting next to me or on the other side of the country. But in person, you get an extra cognitive load of being around people. Someone brings smelly sandwich, someone else forgot to shower then another one keeps chewing gum and making loud mouth noises.
> Supporting a joyful environment.
One man's joy is another man misery. Certainly having people making morning journey from across the country and then observing how they "work" may be joyful experience for a manager feeling insecure.
Best compromise I saw is that if someone can't work at home, company gives them vouchers at their local co-working space of their choosing. No commute and office experience.
Company: What are your thoughts on returning to the office?
Staff: What are your thoughts if we all say fuck off?
And that was decided.
This. I get that remote isn't always practical or effective, I do. But it's the staunch insistence on one way of working, and the denial that it needs improvement, that pisses me off so god damn much.
If I could actually get more work done in an office, of course I would go back. I have a huge backlog of shit to get through! But an hour commute isn't making that easier. And we all have been in the office where half the team is spread out just because they want to get away from noise, or to find a more comfy place, or they need heads-down time without interruptions. We've all been in meetings where 3 people are remote just because they needed to let a repair man in at noon, or their daughter's sick, or something's going on. And that is fine. So what's wrong with keeping that the same, and just not requiring people go in?
Then there's all the other dysfunctional shit that has nothing to do with an office, where the office is the excuse to never fix it. We can't figure out our online communications? No problem, just buy a big room and shove people in it and they can just walk up to each other all the time. We can't properly organize our documentation? Big room, shove people in it, walk up and ask where something is. No documentation? Big room, shove people, interrupt, ask how it works. Need to decide something but don't want to have a meeting? No problem, just interrupt 5 people at once and have an impromptu meeting. Who needs to improve their business process when they can just have people interrupt each other all day and never write a single thing down?
Remote doesn't magically work well either. You have to do specific things to make remote successful. I'm pretty sure the reason for mandatory return is just that they don't want to try. Even if half the workforce wanted to work in an office, they could buy a smaller office and let workers do what they need to do. But that would still require improvements to get the remote half to work well with the in-office half, so let's just avoid that extra work and force everyone into the office. That's easy for management, but sucks for the workforce, and the business.
This wasn't the case during covid, of course, and also during the beginning of post-covid.
It seems all is behind us. Not sure what the value of all this is, except for some people telling others how they have to live life.
Don't act like this is a one-way street.
If you're working remotely then your employer is also telling its employees how they have to live life. It's just that in this case you happen to agree with them so it's A-OK!
Many people who prefer working in an office prefer to work with other people who are also in an office. They do not want to interact with people who are working remotely.
Just to be clear, this is a 100% fine preference to have.
In this case, a company saying, "Yeah get a coworking space or whatever and meet with the remote people on Zoom" is telling these employees how to live, exactly the same as telling a WFH employee to come into the office due to RTO.
And again, just to be clear, neither of these are bad things. It just depends on your perspective.
You complaining "your unwillingness to come to the office is forcing me to remain lonely in the office" is exactly the same kind of argument, structurally, as the incel argument "your unwillingness to have sex with me is forcing me to remain a virgin." Yes, there are some things that you cannot do alone, but that does not entitle you to force me to accommodate you.
Yes, they are. They are trying to get people to work with them who don't want to work with them. This is exactly the same thing as RTO does to WFH people.
And it's fine! It's just a preference and it's fine for a company to make a decision that makes some people upset.
Those people can deal with it or they can get a new job.
Pushing for only one way of working or the other is telling people how to live. It has been like this for many years because there was little or no alternative. Now "thanks to" the covid an alternative came. But hey, now let's all go back to the traditional way things have always been done.
If a company is fully remote (no offices at all) before you apply you know what you're getting into. Same for a company only working from the office full time.
The issue is the companies slowly going back in a forceful manner, taking away the alternative, and all the people feeling "lonely" or having their "way things should be" being fine with that and actually enforcing this.
All surveys show people want flexibility, yet we're doing a lot to go to the pre 2019 model.
When a company says, "This is how we work," that is them telling you to conform your life to how they work if you want to work there. That's for any value of "this" from remote, in-office, hybrid, whatever.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It just happens that the people who are strongly in favor of remote work don't seem to acknowledge the fact that committing to remote work alienates some workers the same way that in-office work alienates some workers.
"Oh but they can go into the empty office" doesn't solve the problem the way so many pro-WFH people seem to think it does.
You can dislike tradition the same as someone dislikes the nontraditional. They're just preferences not unequivocally right or wrong choices.
Everybody just wants their employer to commit to the preference that they prefer.
If there are so many people missing the office life, why don't they go to the office? Why do they need to be forced?
I really believe given the conversations I had with some colleagues (and others in general) that people who miss the office want an office full or at least 70-80% full because of the way it has always been before covid - it doesn't matter if there is 20% of people, it's just not enough.
This is what I personally don't understand, and this is why I say people are now forcing everyone else to go back to the office. Which is not as those who WFH.
Full remote (no offices etc) is a different beast - I am not talking about that.
I don't understand what you're asking here.
My point is that a remote worker saying, "You work in the office while I work at home" is dissatisfying to many people who like the idea of working with people in person and who dislike collaborating with others who are working remote.
> If there are so many people missing the office life, why don't they go to the office? Why do they need to be forced?
Some people don't miss the office and need to be forced to go to the office – if the company decides they want employees in the office.
I don't get what you don't understand?
If a company wants all its employees in the office then allowing some to WFH isn't going to happen. If a company wants all its employees to WFH then working in office isn't going to happen. If a company wants a hybrid solution where some employees WFH and some work in office then it's going to be dissatisfying to those who want all employees in office.
> If a company wants a hybrid solution where some employees WFH and some work in office then it's going to be dissatisfying to those who want all employees in office.
Right, but why should we care?
Extremes are specific situations that must be addressed differently: I want full remote, does my company allow it or not? If yes, ok, if not, either I leave, or I find another way.
Same applies for people wanting everyone at the office: things have changed over the years, why do we want or need that? It's a decision that forces 80% or more of the workforce to behave in a certain way, just because some people have a very specific need.
If someone wants everybody at the office, it's his/her own problem to deal with, as the person who wants full remote, yet forced to meet with colleagues from time to time. Extremes have huge impact over each other.
You can't make everyone happy, but it also means you should not take away a huge benefit for many. This is why I like how some companies are doing, and yet it surprises me to read that some companies are just back to precovid like WFH never existed. It doesn't make any sense.
Exactly! You only care about your own preferences. Nothing wrong with that.
So you should not be surprised when people who want to work in an office with other employees in an office don’t care about the people who want to work remotely.
> You can't make everyone happy, but it also means you should not take away a huge benefit for many
It doesn’t mean that at all.
It means that removing what some see as a huge benefit may have negative business consequences — or it might not.
This is not at all the same. There is a clear difference, again, between the RTO position which requires positive action from other people (travel in to work, come into a physical location) and the WFH position, which does not require anything of their RTO colleagues beyond what the job requires anyways. How can you not see the difference here?
"They are trying to get people to work with them who don't want to work with them." What is this supposed to mean, concretely? Are you saying that because Bob is not in the office you don't want to work with Bob, but Bob is forcing you to work with him? This is not the argument WFH people are making. It is management that has a vested interest in requiring people to work together. I've never heard a serious proponent of WFH arguing that you have to work with them.
Are you saying that having remote team members requires you to use tools and practices that you don't have to in an in-person setting? I would counter that Jira, Zoom, Slack/Teams, Email, etc., all of these "remote/async" tools are not unique to remote workers. And they pre-date the normalization of remote working. Even in a fully on-prem model the vast majority of companies are still using these tools because of the convenience and control they give management, because they have offices distributed geographically, and because they want to be able to communicate beyond the in-office hours of operation. Again, this is not something that the WFH people are pushing onto the RTO people, it is something management at large has decided for the company.
Really, it's hard to take you seriously and I'm sorry for my attitude, but I can't help but see this as an extremely entitled position that is requiring other people to go out of their way to accommodate your desires. If I'm misunderstanding, please correct me and name a single positive action that a WFH proponent is requiring an in-office proponent take that would not be part of their regular job responsibilities in an in-office setting. Not a "they are depriving me of my preference because they just won't do what I want," but something they are actually requiring you to do.
Each of the 2 groups wants to inconvenience the other group. You’re free to argue “positive action” (whatever that means) or make one group out as worse than the other though. I just happen to think that both are equally right/wrong (which is to say not at all).
> I can't help but see this as an extremely entitled position that is requiring other people to go out of their way to accommodate your desires
Oh, so like when a WFH person says, “I don’t want to ever come into the office”? They’re making anyone whose desires include not working with remote workers accommodate their desires.
Again, I can’t state this plainly enough: Nobody is right and nobody is wrong here.
We’re talking about groups of people with different preferences and unfortunately these preferences are at odds. Two of these groups include:
• People who would like to work in an office only with people who are also in that office – no remote work.
• People who strongly prefer remote work.
It is a question of which group does the company choose to upset. Of course there are other groups involved as well, but you get the idea. Somebody is going to be upset to some degree.
If they choose to upset the pro-office people, they are not wrong! If they choose to upset the WFH people, they are also not wrong! If they choose to upset everyone they are not wrong!
However, I see a very big difference between a preference that requires other people to take specific action to satisfy, and one that does not, and that's exactly the dynamic I see here. It is that expectation that other people will do things that they prefer not to do in order to satisfy your preference that I see as entitled.
As an aside, I'm not arguing right or wrong. I actually see many benefits to a good office environment (see my sibling comment in this discussion for the problem I have, basically that the majority of office environments are not good). I'm arguing coercion vs. freedom. My argument is that the RTO position is coercive in a way that the WFH position is not, that it's not the same.
I will take several simple example to try and explain how I see this difference.
Consider a Christmas party. I want to wear red and green. I don't care what other people wear. I'm not putting any restriction or obligation on other people. I can satisfy my preference through my own actions alone.
Now consider that I wan everyone to wear red and green. I am not going to be happy unless everyone is wearing red and green. In this example I cannot satisfy my preference without convincing or coercing other people to respect my preference. I am expecting my preference to win out over everyone else. I can frame the argument as "why should their (individual) preference to wear white supercede my (collective) preference that we wear green and red?" It is not the same because my preference in this scenario requires other people to actively change what they are doing.
Now, as you have said, this is not necessarily right or wrong (maybe we're taking theme photos, who knows), and I'm not making the argument that WFH is morally superior or necessarily more productive/better in any way. All I am doing is pointing out that your position is coercive in a way that the opposite is not.
Mission accomplished I guess?
My point is that it doesn’t matter which is more coercive because each party doesn’t care about inconveniencing and upsetting the other as long as they get what they want.
With that as a principle, coercive choices require, morally, a higher bar of justification.
If we truly throw concern for others our the window, I believe we ultimately lose the foundation for cooperation and polite society and eventually degenerate into some form of "might makes right," and I would argue we're already there to some degree.
As you can probably guess, I am doubtful that the value of RTO justifies the coercion required, at least as currently envisioned and with offices as they are currently designed. And the proof of this, to me, is the exodus of workers from companies making this mandate.
I recognize that company ownership has the ability to require this, but they have to recognize that this kind of coercive action is counter to a spirit of cooperation and "ownership."
From the employee POV, even if I was a RTO supporter, I would not be in favor of mandatory RTO because of this coercive aspect. I prefer not to force my preferences on others in any aspect of my life.
I recognize that this may be a point where we disagree, but that is why I was so passionate to point out that the two positions are not the same. They differ on a point that is critical from my point of view.
You didnt get paid for commute time earlier.
COVID recovered it for you.
one hour of your time in this century, is FAR more valuable than time in any other century - simply because you can spend that time on a multitude of pursuits to enrich your life than ever before.
Anyone ambitious, self driven will fight for those 2 hours + a day lost in commutes, because they can use it for themselves.
At the margin, people who needed a few hours more to accelerate their lives will have fled bad firms.
I am fine with RTO if you start paying me for those hours.
At this point, I haven't seen a single attempt from any company to offer such a rationale.
We can reasonably infer that such policies are not rooted in any evidence-oriented analysis.
There are certainly perceived benefits to management and/or related to real estate interests, including but not limited to: easier observation and suppression of employee organizing, different legal exposure profile as fewer people are casually creating business communication that may later be sifted during legal discovery, propping up commercial real estate investments, etc.
2) Municipalities give all sorts of tax breaks and incentives to companies, but only if people are in person helping the local economy.
If commercial real estate in general loses value, the value of these assets is also reduced, which will eventually be reflected on their balance sheets.
Even in cases where the real estate is leased rather than owned, the future rents owned are liabilities that are also a part of the companies' financial reports. If the demand for commercial real estate goes down, they won't be able to fully offset liabilities by subletting or selling their commercial real estate, which will show up as losses, write offs or write downs.
Those gatherings are great. Working with my team remotely is also great.
I'll take the happiness thanks. You can keep the joy, let me know when you can share in the rewards of those achievements more robustly and I'll consider sacrificing for it.
I've never encountered this perspective before. Why was/is this disliked?
Carbon emissions are literally killing people, and are bound to kill many more millions if we don't change our ways.
So if the cooks and nurses and truck drivers have no choice, then I'd say that it's our duty to work remotely in order to do our part in reducing emissions.
Press X to doubt; sounds like billionaire brainwashing noise to me.
The comment you replied to asked us to consider the views of the rest of the population. Well, my point is that framing the WFH/RTO debate as a duty to the environment while selling ads for a living does indeed look entitled and a bit spoiled.
And this happened day in day out with nobody ever questioning the sanity of such a practice.
> The longer we bemoan being forced to go to work in order to get paid, the more the rest of the population becomes convinced that the professional class is entitled and a bit spoiled.
I stopped caring about what random strangers think when I was in high school. The correct answer to this is to tell these random people who have no skin in the game to fuck off.
I'd argue it's quite the opposite!
If I stay at home, I'm one less person compressing them in the metro, or helping gridlock the highways or taking up parking spaces (I live in the city where parking is scarce for pretty much everyone). If I can work remotely every day, I'm likely to leave my apartment in the city center and go live somewhere far away. That's one less person competing for housing.
So in some ways (i.e. housing prices), you working from home does directly make these people lives worse, as you are now their competition for real-estate.
But if enough people like me move out from the city, there's a possibility that prices will go down in the cities, right? So that should help the people who need to be physically present at work.
I think it's fair to expect employees to exert the mental effort to empathize with the companies they work for when the companies show effort to do likewise.
Early in my career, a senior colleague used to reply to complaints with the simple statement "you only get the company/boss that you deserve".
By that, he meant that if you complained, you were always free to leave and find a better fit elsewhere. I learnt to appreciate that saying as I grew older.
If you think you deserve a better office space / coworkers / manager / CEO, then go look for it elsewhere. If you don't find it, then you are probably in the place you deserve, like it or not.
I didn't have to go outside that day, but I'll never forget how lucky I am and that other people still have to.
But what difference does it make? I can feel sorry for people all day but I can't stop the rain.
On the other hand, nobody listened to people like me who were saying open offices were bad for us and we can't concentrate properly in them. So much for empathy.
don't know what this argument is supposed to be? seems like something a ceo made up to emotionally justify their position rather than based in any sort of objective reasoning
things shouldn't get better because other things haven't gotten better? is that the crux of your argument?
The fact that other roles cannot work remote is beside the point. People want a reasonable say in their work environment regardless of the nature of their work. And they'll negotiate accordingly if the work requires physical presence.
Desk workers aren't spoiled for pointing out the waste and abuse of involuntary butt-in-seats policies. The accusation comes across as trying to incite discord.
1. it can work 2. it is against existing, entrenched interests
Hence the tension.
FWIW, our company just mandated RTO and there was push back, because the person making the decision made it basically within a week from publishing date and a lot of people have kids so it is not exactly a flip a switch kind of situation PLUS there are a couple of high visibility projects that rely on staff good will to push it past the finish line. No flexibility from company means no flexibility from us ( no more calls after 5 to deal with fires and so on ).
I accept not all jobs are ready for WFH ( butcher, surgeon and so on ), but some absolutely are.
Going to the office before the pandemic was totally different. Even though I did work from home regularly then too. But at the office I had the same colleagues around me (even though my direct colleagues were all in different locations). I had my own desk with my stuff. Now I just have a locker and I'm a dumb number that nobody cares about. I hate the company.
> The longer we bemoan being forced to go to work in order to get paid, the more the rest of the population becomes convinced that the professional class is entitled and a bit spoiled.
They decided to get into a profession they doesn't have working from home as an option. They can change if they want.
Also I don't really give a F if other people think I'm spoiled.
So people who can work from home should go to the office to satisfy "the rest of the population"? This is some novel concept. Have you tried approaching company owners and CEO and ask them to make their compensation to be more in line with the general population as well?
Secondly, you most be very out of touch to think that everyone who can work from home is a 180,000 a year Peet's coffee filled software engineer. Lots and lots of lower wage, lower education jobs can work from home but are getting forced to the office. Executive assistants, customer support, marketers, copywriters, I could list a lot more.
These are the worst comments on HN, just ultra lazy defense of the status quo with no real meat to it.
Customer support folks working from home predated the pandemic. In fact, they often work from outside the country.
Marketing is a profession like engineering. They don’t get paid by the hour.
Most hourly workers have to work onsite.
I feel like your comment is less logical argument and more emotional reaction.
If you as a professional class worker think the rent is too damn high, consider how insane it is for people who make less and work longer hours.
It's become clear to me that real estate is the economic problem, at least in the US. I said the economic problem, singular. I don't think any other issue compares.
The phenomenon of younger generations feeling poorer than their parents is largely attributable to real estate costs. I think real estate is at the root of a ton more problems too: homelessness (for obvious reasons), collapsing birth rates, low rates of family formation, even crime. Real estate is basically cannibalizing the future.
Yes, some people don't have the option of remote work, but if you have that option, how does that affect those that don't? Cleaning my plate won't feed starving kids in Africa, and taking shit over working from home doesn't help people whose jobs require physical presence.
Some people can work from home, and entire fields can't. So what? How is that relevant? Some jobs just don't require physical presence and business owners don't like that for a variety of unfair reasons. People who can work from home are being treated unfairly. How does that affect kids in Africa? Does it hurt them? Help them? Or are they utterly irrelevant to the problem at hand?
The existence of farmers doesn't really have a single thing to do with call center workers taking calls at home. Of course farmers can't farm remotely, but that's utterly irrelevant. No one is trying to force farmers and nurses to dramatically change their work environment on the whim of some middle manager who read a really good thinkpiece from WSJ.
Discussion about this problem doesn't mention doctors and farmers because the conversation is not about them in the same way that it's not about starving kids in Africa
I actually think professional class is more prone to tolerate this attitude from the management, because it's what corporate environment teaches to do.
Keeping more people away from commutes though does reduce traffic for those who need to get around.
Central commercial real estate could actually provide useful things, rather then "places people sit at computers they could do anywhere".
Distributing the work force out means more mixing of class and profession. Service jobs can be closer to where people live because they're more distributed.
My experience is that the rest of the population has very little day-to-day contact with people like me and remote work only reduces it, so they simply don't care.
I get some vague interest in the details of my life when salaries are mentioned, but when I explain what kind of hoops you have to jump and what kind of lifestyle you have to lead (desk job and learning after hours) to get to these figures, interest is usually lost.
Overall people are way less interested in how strangers live their lives and visibly less envious than one would think. For most this line of work is boring and soul crushing and they don't think the salary makes it worth it.
* Employers should pay the cost of employee travel to work, at least count the time spent traveling to work as work hours. If I'm driving into work it's not really my free time.
* If I lived near my workplace, I wouldn't care about working from home so much. Society has done something seriously wrong where most people cannot live near where they work.
* By getting the professional class off the roads, traffic is better for those who have to work in person. By tearing down the offices that aren't really needed and replacing with residential and other mixed use, we might have a shot at rearranging things where the people that need to be physically present at work can live close to work.
All workers deserve to have a say in their working conditions.
How one talks about it can be entitled or spoiled sounding, but the desire to influence and change one's working conditions is noble and in common with great majority of workers.
When my children were small I started working remotely while my partner worked in an office still. I looked for a remote job so that rather than being in a office and going to get some coffee I was excited to instead get to see my 8 month of doing some baby biz on my coffee break.
What a wonderful privilege it was during that age of growth. How great it would be for more people to have that experience (which was very common before industrialization).
Should we also cancel telehealth programs so those nurses that actually do work remotely don’t become spoiled and entitled?
My partner is a nurse. Of course she can't work from home. Her job is literally touching people, putting things in them and taking things out.
They're not making her go to the hospital just to fuck with her.
My job, on the other hand, does not involve physical contact. In fact, I don't even need to leave home, as demonstrated by years of working at home. I deliver value at home so I get paid for it. It's as simple as that really. It's completely irrelevant how other people deliver their value.
He would often get offended in the open office around the other engineers. Why? Language. He once asked me not to say "damn" around him because he's very religious.
It was a C/C++/C# codebase, so that was never going to happen.
Something like:
Each employee is given a small budget and menu where they can decide what amenities their bathroom gets stocked with. You can decorate it according to your whims.
There's so many logistical and even geometric problems with the idea. But just imagine the retention numbers if someone was actually able to pull it off. You have your own personal bathroom overlooking a serene wooded area, wall mounted TV doing sports ball recap, small private library, and scented candle with that sent you can't get enough of.
[Although, honestly, I would be happy if they just made the toilet stall dividers go from the floor to the ceiling.]
I mean, I kind of get having that kind of thing in, say, an airport or somewhere with security concerns, but being treated like that in an office environment is horrible.
No thanks, I'll take my 2 ply, my own toilet, and actual nutritious lunches.
Completely false. There are more successful companies than there are most talented people.
The way we used to work is an emergent reality that had begun to fray long before the pandemic, see multilocation strategies, selective remote working options, hotel seating with over subscribed occupancy. The cost of commercial real estate was already being eyed carefully. As a senior executive in multinational mega corps I can tell you definitively “bring your own office” in 2019 was seen as bigger than “bring your own device” in terms of potential to reduce cost, increase productivity, and maximize EPS. The biggest barrier was the 5-10 year real estate development and tax abatement cycles, but you were already seeing compression of available seating and over subscription with a 10 year plan to compress to only essential coworking. Further, while panned now, the WeWork model was seen as the future - essentially elastic occupancy as opex, burstable cloud like office space flexibly located where the talent lives.
The pandemic accelerated this stepwise from 20% to 100% overnight. I could see it in the eyes of the CEOs as they saw the culture they understood disappear overnight and the emotional entrenchment that “this can’t be allowed to persist.” Despite all the prior plans and agreement, an emotional reaction took hold. They saw the productivity improvements and were unswayed. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about productivity, it wasn’t about efficiencies. It was about a way of living being threatened, a way the CEOs were manifestly beneficiaries of, and was the only lifestyle they knew and understood. They didn’t want things to change. To buttress their desires, tax abatements and leases obligated use of the real estate. But make no mistake, the RTO movement is almost entirely driven by a near maniacal gripping onto a way of life the decision makers benefited from and can’t let go of.
Joy of the team, sacrificing the individual for the greater good, watercooler serendipity, “think of the kids,” etc, are all smokescreens for the real motivations: fear of an unraveling of the emergent reality that todays leaders owe their entire successful career to, and at that level, that’s all they have in their life. That office culture is literally the cornerstone of their identity, and being more or less all narcissists, they believe their identity is the cornerstone to the world.
The rest of the article is pretty good. I wouldn’t stop reading based on the intro.
The essence is there’s a continuum of work styles along a two dimensional system (in office - remote / sync - asynch). Each quadrant has its own benefits. They seem to assert the middle, hybrid, is the worst of all worlds, and it’s better to pick a style and lean into it. They offer a variety of ways to lean into a style.
IMO I think this is overly simplistic and the most efficient reality, and likely the emergent one we land in within 10 years, is a mixed reality. Coworking works well for some, doesn’t for others. The skills for a remote workplace benefit a multi location team, a hybrid team, or a fully remote team equally. Some tasks are async, some are sync. Once a team has one person not on site, the team only functions as a remote team; otherwise the person not onsite isn’t a part of the team. Recognizing that any team level work would be handled as if everyone were remote.
There will be a contingent who work best in an office. They will continue to have one, albeit a smaller space with fewer and fewer amenities as the occupancy cost / person is squeezed. Those that work best remotely will land at a place that values them for the way they work best. We will continue to refine our work protocols to accommodate this new way of working. The CEOs of today will become the CEOs of yesterday. The new CEOs will be the ones who emerged ahead during the pandemic. The new mid level will be the ones who excelled in remote school and remote entry level.
Bring your own office will become the buzz word. Boards will see the cold hard reality of occupancy cost per head in office rising relentlessly. Tax abatements and leases will have frayed. Then, either the weworks of today or its replacement will have its day.
Order the team to work from office 996. Unlock their potential, don't compromise! Kill the individual autonomy.
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